Search CAS
Viewing 2151 to 2175 of 2353 results
2020 CAS UNIVERSITY AWARD WINNER
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY
Temple University’s actuarial science program has five actuarial faculty members and 250 actuarial students. The university impressed the judges with its focus on property and casualty insurance across curriculum, research, and industry engagement.
Highlights include:
The world is going through an extraordinary event.
My first CAS meeting was the 100-year anniversary annual meeting in New York City. I was planning on attending my second meeting in Orlando last fall, but as fate and my later-identified inadequate knowledge of the exam 9 material would have it, I am currently dreaming about Austin, Texas for November 2017.
Here lies the best advice I collected before my first meeting, and what I will do differently while attending my second.
Relative to some other professions, like teacher, doctor, or engineer, the job of actuary seems like a modern idea. After all, there are many fewer actuaries despite it being ranked as one of the best careers in the world. However, the practice of actuarial science is not as young as it used to be. In fact, primitive versions of actuaries are as old as insurance itself, dating back to the seventeenth century. The Casualty Actuarial Society was founded in 1914, which set forth the principles that we follow today.
When the Technology Based Examinations (TBE) were announced, I was pretty shocked to hear that the candidates sitting for a TBE exam would not be able to use a calculator for the exam. Of course, there is no need for a calculator when you have Excel at your fingertips, but my calculators were so important to me during my fellowship journey that I think of calculators as a necessary component of actuarial exams. They are the physical embodiment of all the study hours we put in as well as (fairly) reliable friends to have by our sides during the exams.
The lack of racial diversity in the actuarial profession is staggering – only 1 percent of CAS members are Black or African American, and only 1 percent are Hispanic or Latino. There were more CAS members who became Fellows in 2017 than there are CAS members who are Black or Latino (either Associates or Fellows). The CAS has recently recommitted itself to correcting this issue, as shown by updating its diversity strategy this year.
Customer centricity is a hot topic these days. Just look at the rise of behavioral economics (or read about the field in the book, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, recently reviewed on the Future Fellows Blog). Countless resources have been invested in trying to predict how consumers will act. Companies in every industry are revamping products, services and distribution models with a greater emphasis on the customer experience and what the customer wants.
